Hurricanes Irma and Maria and September, October, November and December 2017 Payroll data for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands

Background:

Hurricane Irma caused severe damage in St. Thomas and St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Puerto Rico also suffered damage from Irma. Irma was a Category 5 hurricane when near the U.S.
Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

Hurricane Maria made landfall in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in Puerto Rico on
Wednesday, September 20, causing catastrophic damage. These areas already had suffered damage
from Hurricane Irma earlier in the month.

What was the impact of the storm on establishment survey response rates for Puerto Rico?

The CES program reviewed, and continues to review, all aspects of its estimation procedures
to determine if any changes are necessary. For the release of September 2017 Puerto Rico
estimates, the collection rates in the affected areas were within normal ranges, and the CES
program determined that no modifications to the current methodology would be made. Survey
response rates were lower than average for the October reference month but continued to
improve to near average levels by December. A summary of the survey response rates by
reference month for Puerto Rico is included below.

Did CES estimation procedures change for the September through December 2017 data for Puerto Rico?

Research indicates that while both the business birth and death portions of total employment
are generally significant, the net contribution is relatively small and stable. To account
for this net birth/death portion of total employment, BLS uses an estimation procedure with
two components: the first component excludes employment losses due to business deaths from
sample-based estimation in order to offset the missing employment gains from business births.
This is incorporated into the sample-based estimate procedure by simply not reflecting sample
units going out of business, but imputing to them the same trend as the other firms in the
sample. This step accounts for most of the birth employment. Given the impact of hurricanes
Irma and Maria, reported zeroes were used to calculate the final October and preliminary and final
November estimates for Puerto Rico to reflect likely changes in business birth/death patterns
in Puerto Rico. The second component is an auto-regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)
time series model designed to estimate the residual birth/death employment not accounted for
by the imputation. This second component was not modified for final October or preliminary
November estimates for Puerto Rico.
See https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbd.htm for
more information on the CES net birth/death model.

How were establishment estimates for the U.S. Virgin Islands affected by the recent hurricanes?

Because of the devastation caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the U.S. Virgin Islands was not able
to conduct normal data collection activities for its establishment survey for several months. In turn,
given the lack of adequate sample data, preliminary September, October and November estimates for the
U.S. Virgin Islands were not published. The latest estimates for the U.S. Virgin Islands were revised
August 2017 estimates published on October 20, 2017. As of mid-December, the U.S. Virgin Islands was
able to resume data collection and produce revised estimates for September, October, and November 2017
and preliminary estimates for December 2017. Survey response rates were below average but were adequate
to produce reliable estimates. No modifications were made to the estimation methods for the U.S. Virgin
Islands. These data were published on January 23, 2018.